Medicine cabinets are known that allow the storage of many different types of medicine simultaneously. However, there is a need for a medicine management and identification system that identifies what different types of medicines look like and maintains the different types of medicines in an easy to access format and an easy replaceable format. Additionally, there is a need for a medicine management and identification system that is free-standing, portable and provides a record of previously taken medications selected from a plurality of prescribed medications.
It is known that a major problem in the dispensation of medication, for every medical personal, non-medical personal, or untrained medical personal, is often dispensed in error because the patient, care giver, or team of care givers, or untrained non-medical person or medical person is not familiar with what the actual prescribed medicine looks like in its appearance, including size, shape, color and smell. In addition, the medical personal, non-medical personal, or untrained medical personal, may not have immediate access to a physician's guide to look up what a particular drug looks like.
Patients frequently do not know or reasonably forget what their individual medications look like. Further, patient frequently forget to take daily timed medication on time, if at all, or alternatively misuse or overdose in the taking of medication. Medication compliance, also, typically drops off to less than fifty percent compliance when three or more different doses of medications are required on a daily basis. There are many medical conditions which critically rely upon the careful administration of drugs such as in the areas of cancer drug regimes, anti-coagulation, seizures, diabetes, narcotics, anti-biotics and cardiac medications.
The Mayo Clinic reports that nearly 70% of American people are on at least one drug, and 20% of American people are on 5 or more prescription drugs. The Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2015, reported 60% of Americans taking prescription drugs and nearly 3 in 5 take a prescription drug, up markedly since the year 2000 due to anti-depressants, treatment for high cholesterol and diabetes.
Accordingly, many different medicine managing devices have been invented to assist the patient and the care giver in taking medication in a prescribed scheduled manner. Such devices include pillboxes having a plurality of compartments, each of which include a closeable cover which can be identified with a dispensing system implementing calendaring features, for example, a different day of the week, a different time of day, or a specific date. In use of such a medicine managing device, the patient or care giver can retrieve the correct medicine from the identifiable compartment and accordingly administer the medicine to the patient. The patient or care giver, subsequently can record that the medicine was administered by the patient, or by the care giver, and that the patient ingested the medicine, the date, time, if taken with food, liquid, and quantity.
Most modern medicine managing devices require the patient, or a care giver to be familiar with the dispensation of the prescribed medicine or supplement with knowledge of challenging medical language used to identify the medicine including medical abbreviations, name brands, generic brands, together with most importantly, what the medicine actually looks like, for example the specifications of a pill, including its color, shape, size, odor; or an ampule; a patch, an emolument, and the like. Therefore, these medicine managing medicine devices implement an apparatus that is not reliably implemented by the variety of users, patients, care givers, or family members that may need to administer the medicine to the patient. Accordingly, the patient is administered the incorrect medicine.
In addition, the user, patient, or care-giver is unfamiliar with the ideal time to dispense the medicine to the patient or misplaces a prescription issued by the physician recording the frequency, time, and dosage of the medicines, along with what to take with or not to take with the dispensation of the particular medicine by itself or in combination with another drug.
It is known to many family members and care givers of loved ones that the patient may stop speaking during treatments and therapies for cancer, especially, beloved patients that are undergoing care in a hospice environment. Even more, it is known to many family ones and caregivers that the patient will lose her/his hearing partially, or completely. The modern medicine management devices do not provide a means for the patient to communicate to the family member that she/he can recognize the correct pill to be taken at the prescribed time or that the patient can point to a correct pill or ampule communicating that she/he is requesting a dosage of prescribed medicine to relieve pain.
Thus, there is a need for a personalizable medicine management system and kit for identifying actual medicine and/or supplement exemplars of the particular prescribed medicine and/or supplement for a specific patient and indication associated information so as to visually correlate the actual medicine and/or supplement with the associated information.
It is apparent that embodiments for medication organizers have been provided in the related art, which are adapted to be used by people prescribed a variety of medications by a medical practitioner. Furthermore, even though these embodiments may be suitable for the specific individual purposes to which they address, nevertheless, they would not be suitable for the purposes of the embodiments of the present invention as hereto fore described, namely a medical management system and kit personalized for a specific patient identifying actual medicine and/or supplement exemplars and indicating associated information so as to visually correlate the actual medicine and/or supplement exemplar with the associated information.